50 posts tagged “snacks”

Sorry that I didn't get to update much this summer! Thanks for the support, I'm back and hope to catch up on some of the things from the summer. I'm currently applying for medical school while doing a masters program, so things will be super hectic this year, but I'll try my best to stay on top of my Vox :)

Anyway, to get started, here are some of the meals I made over the summer:

Tuna helper with veggies

Sometime last year my boyfriend and I discovered the joys of making dinner with those skillet meal-in-a-box type things like Tuna Helper. We particularly like the tuna helper because it only requires canned tuna, whereas we never have any ground beef sitting around for the hamburger helpers. The tuna helpers come with dried pasta in the box, along with a packet of flavor powder, which usually reminds me of the smell of sour cream and onion chips. Sometimes there are little bits of dehydrated broccoli in the powder. When we cook the tuna helpers, we like to add to it by cutting in fresh veggies that we have on hand and adding extra pasta and tuna to make the food last a few meals. In the photo above we added red peppers, broccoli, and onions as vegetables. I actually enjoy the flavor of the meal even though we've added so much stuff that the original flavor of the flavor powder is diluted, I guess the intended flavor must be stronger than I would like.  Lately we've experimented by adding some canned salmon in place of the canned tuna, and though it sounds good, I actually prefer the tuna, which has a much stronger flavor than the salmon.

Jocolat bar - Mint Chocolate Chip

I signed up for a free promotion from Larabars (a brand of organic energy/snack bars made with natural raw ingredients) where they sent me 4 different full-sized Larabars as a sampler. The Larabars are mostly made of dates and nuts. They're moist, filling, and surprisingly delicious! I encourage you to try out a Larabar next time you are at the market. They have tons of different flavors. Larabars also makes a different bar called Jocolat, which uses organic cocoa powder to make a chocolate-flavored bar that still uses dates and nuts to provide the body. I really like the Jocolat bars, which you can see above looks pretty yummy. The cocoa flavor was nice, but it isn't for you if you are craving creamy sugary chocolate. The chocolate is all in the flavoring, it's somewhat subtle but I think it's nice for mature palettes. Plus, it doesn't get sickeningly sweet after a while, which I thought was good since I was eating it for breakfast. Yum.

Shake 'n Bake chicken with stir fried veggies and Rice-a-roni

My boyfriend first introduced me to the delicious lazy person's meal option called Shake 'n Bake. It's a pre-prepared mixture of seasonings and bread crumbs that you coat chicken or pork with before baking. After it's done baking the chicken becomes wonderfully delicious, with a savory, crunchy coating of bread crumbs. We like to make it with bone-in chicken thighs which are more moist than breast meat and stand up well to baking. We paired the chicken with chicken flavored Rice-a-roni and some stir fried mixed veggies. It's a quick and easy dinner that tastes amazingly good! (Oh and sorry for using the same bowl over and over, but I'm a poor college student... I just don't have that many options.)

Japanese curry with fried egg over rice

I'm sorry that my updates seem sporadic lately, it's not intentional, I promise! There's no point in making excuses, because I am pretty much always "busy", but I have been good about taking all the necessary pictures. So without further ado, I present a collection of things I've eaten, seen, or done in the past month since graduation!

Chicken teriyaki from food court

Lunch shared with my boyfriend during a lunch break at work. We both work in the same area, just down the street from one another, so when we have time we try to have lunch together. There is a food court nearby that has the popular Japanese chicken teriyaki lunchbox meal, so we occasionally share one. The chef that cooks the chicken is pretty funny, he has this thick accent and says enthusiastic things when he serves the food. He often says "chicken ready! yummy yummy!" and "yummy sauce! yummy sauce!" It's quite amusing hehe. I try not to eat out too much for lunch though, as it is a money sink.

Mango

I've been pretty excited about the delicious assortment of exotic fruit available now that it is summer. One of my favorites is mango, especially when it is fully ripe. I'm not very good at slicing one open and avoiding the large fuzzy pit in the center, but when I finally get around to eating the soft sweet flesh it is an amazing flavor. I also like gnawing on the flesh surrounding the pit at the end, but if I do that then I always have to floss because the fuzzy fibers always get stuck in my teeth. I wish I had a blender in my dorm, because I would definitely be making my own mango smoothies. The ones I've eaten are incredibly ripe and sweet, so I imagine the smoothie would be quite flavorful.

Kashi TLC chewy cereal bar

These little babies are what most of my breakfasts consist of this summer. I tend to always wake up too late to eat anything substantial before heading off to work, so these bars are perfect for my always on-the-go schedule. The one pictured above is trail mix flavored, and the others I've bought are honey almond flax, and peanut peanut butter, all of which are fantastic. These are so good for you, and they fill me up for most of the morning too, unlike other cereal bars (ahem, Special K).

MIT triple decker from Ankara Cafe

Okay, this is one of my guilty pleasures in terms of takeout foods while at MIT. Ankara Cafe was first introduced to me because all the students know that it has amazing frozen yogurt with endless varieties because of their long list of blended mix-ins (see below). One of my favorite dinner items from Ankara happens to be the MIT triple decker, which is a 3-bread-slice sandwich with pastrami, roast beef, smoked turkey, swiss cheese, cole slaw, and Russian dressing. I know, it sounds terrible for you, and I assure you that I am well aware it is. But it tastes amazing, always hitting the right spot after a long day. I usually can only eat half of it at a time (or sometimes I will eat the whole thing and feel too stuffed afterwards), but I find that it will taste even better after I microwave the leftover half. Yum!

Blended frozen yogurt with white chocolate and brownie

So this is the well-known Ankara frozen yogurt with mix-ins. They have a list of over 50 different mix-in options, and I've tried many of them in various combinations, still yet to decide on a favorite. This particular yogurt today happened to be vanilla, with white chocolate and brownie mix-ins. The white chocolate chunks are nice, but the brownie mix-in was not quite what I expected. I was imagining small chewy chunks of brownie, but instead it was more like brownie crumbs (see the general light brown color of the yogurt and the small brown specks? that's the brownie...). Still though, the flavor was quite good. A great dessert to follow any takeout items from Ankara :)

Grilled salmon sushi with cucumbers and carrots

Another lunch option at work is the sushi bar in MIT's Stata center across the street. They make boxed sushi rolls that I can just pick up to go. I usually like to get their salmon avocado roll, which has raw salmon in it, but I also really like their grilled salmon roll, whose texture and flavor is completely different from that of raw salmon. They break up the grilled salmon into small bits so that it's easy to chew, which I appreciate.

Cream of spinach soup

I sometimes get a soup to go with my sushi, but the cream of spinach soup overpowered the sushi quite a bit. It was very salty and the spinach flavor was strong, probably because it was frozen spinach instead of fresh. I only had a third of this soup before I had had enough. Probably not a bad soup if you were to have it alone or with a roll for lunch.

Lettuce wrap filling: stir-fried pork, beef, and onions, with fried rice with carrots

Greg and I made Chinese style lettuce wraps one day, using iceberg lettuce as the wrapping and a stir-fried mix of pork, beef, and onions, along with fried rice with carrots as the filling. It doesn't take a lot of effort to prepare, as the meats need very little marinating and cooking time. To make a lettuce wrap, we smeared some hoisin sauce on the inside of a large leaf of lettuce, then topped it with a scoop of rice, followed by a few pieces of meat and onions, just enough to get meat into each bite and give extra flavor to the rice. The purpose of the meat in the lettuce wraps is to add variety and flavor, not to act as the base of the meal. That is the job of the rice! Overall the wraps were pretty tasty though, and I got a second meal out of it too. It was an easy first meal to make with Greg, as we both were a bit rusty on our cooking and kind of lazy too. We always take several meals to settle into the routine of making dinners over the summer, as it is rather inconvenient to cook in my dorm, having to bring everything down into the large single kitchen in the basement.

Vegetarian Vietnamese summer rolls

The Asian food truck that I adore, Goosebeary's, sells these vegetarian summer rolls for lunch. I like to get them occasionally when I want a small lunch in anticipation of a big dinner. The rolls cost $1.50 each, and are usually sold in triples, along with a small container of peanut dipping sauce that I like. The rolls themselves are similar to the ones I previously described from Pho Pasteur, except instead of shrimp and pork, these rolls have tofu, carrots, and shitake mushrooms. The rolls are a refreshing treat for lunch on a hot summer's day, and the peanut sauce enhances the flavors quite well, making this vegetarian roll much less boring than it might look or sound. On the particular day that I bought these rolls, it was towards closing time for the food truck, and I only intended to get two of them. But the lady who was serving me was really nice and charged me $3 total for 3 rolls. I guess they wanted to get rid of their rolls because it was going to go to waste anyway if they couldn't sell them all. Good deal!

Pink flowers

Magenta flowers

Purple flowers

10:00AM On the way to lab
1 Kashi TLC bar in peanut peanut butter. Last day of working in lab for a while. I'm going home for a week!

1:00PM Lab Lounge
1 Promax mini-bar. My lunch today is sad lol.

3:30PM Dorm Room
1/4 of a plain bagel with cream cheese, 1 French cruller, 1 apple.

6:00PM Commuter Rail on the way to see my family!
1 Promax mini-bar. These things really make you thirsty... I think it's the powdery texture of protein bars in general.

8:30PM Home Sweet Home (I'll be here for the next week or so, so until I write otherwise, all these entries will have the location as home)
Leftovers haha. My mom was gone for the night at a conference in Boston, so my Dad and I ate leftovers from whatever she cooked the previous night. To me it's all brand new anyway. I mish-mashed everything onto a plate, and it consisted of white rice, napa with crab meat, Chinese meatloaf, tofu with ground pork and black wood-ear fungus, broccoli, and some steamed salmon. Haha really weird combination and doesn't look that aesthetically pleasing, but it's homecooked and it's food, what else can I ask for? :)

Leftovers at home :)

12:00AM
1 strawberry mochi ice cream. These are little Asian treats that have been modified to suit American tastes with an ice cream center. The classic Japanese dessert of mochi is a ball of fresh glutinous rice flour that has been kneeded with water until it becomes a ball of sticky soft dough. It's often filled with red bean paste and enjoyed on special holidays in Japan. Nowadays you can get mochi ice cream at places like Trader Joe's. It's basically like a golf ball-sized ice cream bonbon with a coating of the mochi sticky rice dough, and the inside is just various flavors of ice cream. I particularly like the red bean flavor, but there's also mango, green tea, vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. This is the first time I tried a strawberry one (I happened to spot a box in the freezer haha), and I really like it! Heh these are good for dessert portion control :P

Strawberry mochi ice cream

11:30AM Dorm Room
Leftover eggplant parm entree while cramming before my final at 1:30pm. Good to be taking an exam on a stomach full of yummy comfort food :)

6:30PM Baker Dining (My last meal here, awww...)
I was hoping that there would be some spectacular dish on my last day at Baker dining, but none of the featured entrees or desserts interested me. So I ended up getting a wrap with roast beef and grilled chicken, along with hummus and roasted vegetables, all wrapped up in a tomato wrap and toasted on a panini grill. I also got a bowl of seafood chowder to go with it. Yum. Baker makes really really good soups. Their seafood chowder was creamy and chock full of seafood. It also had a kick from the paprika that you usually don't taste in other chowders from Legal Seafood for example. But I really think Baker's chowder is every bit as good as a restaurant one, and it went so well with my wrap. Such a relaxing meal after my last final (which went well, I think).

Seafood chowder

Goodbye Baker dining, I'll miss you... I had so many good meals from there in the 4 years that I lived at Baker Hall, I can't even begin to tell you how many times having such great food in a dining hall downstairs saved me when I had stressful weeks. The staff at Baker are also really nice, and they take the time to make conversation with you when they are serving you. The people don't change too often, so they tend to recognize you and I have gotten so many "benefits" from them when they are serving me (okay, strictly in the food sense).

Jesse is an amazing stir fry cook who literally does 6 stir frys at a time when it gets hectic, and still manages to make everything taste so good. He also makes the soups and a big variety of stir fry sauces each day. Sometimes I'd ask for a sauce he didn't have and he would make it on the spot for me even though it took extra time and effort and he had to open new ingredients. Loretta used to serve food from the featured entrees area, but now she does mostly grill duty, along with Alberto (who I knew as "the Boston Red Sox guy" for the longest time b/c he always wears a Red Sox hat). Alberto always likes to hand out favors even though he could get in trouble, and whenever he saw that I was passing over starchy foods like rice and bread he would put on extra veggies and meat for me so I wouldn't go hungry. There is also Roland the Baker dining head chef, who designs the menu and dishes each night. He was nice enough to make me a wrap even though I went down to dining after they had closed the entrance (I slipped in through the exit area where you leave after you pay), and even offered me food from the leftover entrees that were going to be thrown out after closing time. There was also Perry, who was the cashier this year, and he was always curteous to all of us from the first day he started his job to the last day of the year. He always remembers me and he makes an effort to wish everyone a wonderful night. Once I thought this special dessert was all out and he went into the kitchen to look for more for me. It was just such a friendly atmosphere and I always looked forward to going down there for dinner. I really will miss this place.

10:00PM Baker EOTSB
Tonight was the Dunkin Donuts study break. People were all hovering around the boxes of donuts waiting to swoop down and grab the best kinds, and when they said we could start it was literally a feeding frenzy. I happened to be standing next to the Boston cream donuts when they let us start, so I grabbed one of those before it all disappeared. I also nabbed a French cruller and a butternut donut (yes, I'm greedy at study breaks...). I also poured myself a cup of hazelnut coffee because I was sleepy from not sleeping a lot last night. When I actually got back to the dorm I realized that I wasn't hungry enough to eat all those donuts, so I put them in the fridge and just had my coffee haha. I eventually ate the Boston cream donut later on at night. The details are blurry now that it's been like 5 days :P

Dunkin' Donuts tower

2:00PM Dorm Room
Brunch food from Simmons brunch. Greg was there to make a killing with multiple trips, and he was kind enough to bring me some of the food so I had something to eat for lunch, yay! Okay, admittedly the food is terrible for you, but it tasted so good haha. He brought me 3 slices of spiral ham smeared with honey mustard, with a dill dip on the side, and 3 small squares of freshly baked corn bread. Yes, I overloaded on cancerous nitrates, but the ham was juicy and flavorful with the mustard and dill dip. The corn bread was just amazing too, it had a crunchy top and a moist fluffy interior, and it was not too sweet nor too bland. I think it complemented the ham quite well. It sure complemented my unhealthy lunch quite well anyway :P

Corn bread and spiral ham

6:30PM Baker Dining
I wasn't too hungry, but I ordered a stir fry entree with double veggies to try and compensate for my lunch. It had 2 bowls of assorted vegetables, including onions, mushrooms, broccoli, carrots, zucchini, sweet potatoes, red and green bell peppers, napa, water chestnuts, snow pea pods, and scallions (seriously I went all out this time haha). For protein I got tofu, and for starch I asked for rice noodles, all stir fried with chili garlic and oyster sauce. The stir fry cook didn't use quite enough sauce though, so everything was a bit bland (although I suppose I should be thankful for that). While I'm sure the food was insanely healthy, I wasn't actually hungry enough to eat much of it, so I had a few bites before setting it aside for later.

Tofu stir fry with rice noodles

8:30PM Dorm Room
Snuck some bites of Greg's desser tfrom Baker dining: chocolate bomb. Baker occasionally makes warm homemade desserts that you can scoop out as much as you want onto a plate. The chocolate bomb is one of the best desserts, with a chocolatey devil's food cake layer on top and chocolate pudding on the bottom. I'm not sure how exactly they bake it, but they do, and it's a little bit like eating molten chocolate cake, but the pudding isn't overpoweringly sweet like melted chocolate, and the devil's food is light, so the cake overall tastes pretty delicate. Plus Greg topped it off very generously with homemade whipped cream... mmmm. Here's a picture that he took of the dessert:

Chocolate bomb

12:30AM Dorm Room
Some more of my tofu with rice noodles stir fry. I still had 2/3 of the entree left, which I decided to save for lunch tomorrow.

3:00AM Dorm Room
1 sugar-free strawberry jello cup. I could hardly tell it was sugar-free! A pretty healthy snack, considering that it only has 10 calories (!!) I decided to take a picture of it while I was in the middle of eating it, and hey it looks kind of like a rose bloom doesn't it? Sorta?

Strawberry jello

10:00AM On the way to lab
1 Kashi TLC peanut peanut butter granola bar

12:30PM Whitehead Friday Forum
Yay for free lunch! They seem to be cycling through their menu now though, because I've had this one before. 2/3 cup of fusilli pasta in herbed balsamic vinaigrette sauce, with a 4 oz braised chicken breast. 1/2 a large chocolate cookie with white chocolate chips. I really like the pasta and chicken with the balsamic vinaigrette, which is mildly sour with a smooth sweetness that balsamic vinegar is so well known for. I also like to eat the chocolate cookie along with the dish because I think the sweetness of the cookie balances out the sour and saltiness of the entree. But that could just be me hehe.

7:15PM Cafe Mami in Porter Square
Pork cutlet curry entree with fried egg. Wow, I've missed Cafe Mami's amazing Japanese food. Porter Square has a strip of small Japanese restaurants that serve up really delicious and authentic Japanese dishes, from fresh ramen to Japanese curry to sushi. Cafe Mami is the most popular restaurant at the Porter Square strip, which is nicknamed "Japantown". It also happens to be the one restaurant that has the least amount of seating available, so there is always a line and they literally cram strangers into the same tables. Today Greg and I were seated along with 5 other strangers at a table that comfortably seats 4 people. Crazy crammed, we barely had room for our plates and bowls, and it just so happens that Greg is a lefty sitting to my right, so my right elbow kept jamming into his left elbow as we were trying to eat haha.

Now, back to the dinner. We started off with bowls of piping hot miso soup, which is a popular broth soup made with fermented soybean paste (miso paste), dried bonito shavings (bonito is a type of fish), seaweed, tofu, and scallions. It's a little bit of an acquired taste, as it is a rather salty soup and has a very subtle gritty texture. It tastes a little bit like soy sauce soup (I know, that sounds gross), considering that soy sauce and miso paste are both made from fermented soybeans. But it's really quite good, and a great starter to a meal because it is so flavorful. The only downside is that the miso paste is insoluble in water, so you have to keep stirring it before you take a sip or else it will begin separating out. I just finished stirring it and waited for the soup to stop whirling around before I took a picture, and you can already see the clouds of miso separating from the water of the soup.

Cafe Mami miso soup

Next came a small salad of iceberg lettuce garnished with carrots, a slice of cucumber, and a wedge of tomato, all drizzled with a sesame oil and vinegar dressing. I wasn't too fond of the sesame oil on my salad, as it has a pretty strong flavor and made the salad a bit too greasy for my liking. Cafe Mami used to serve its salads with a citrus ginger (ponzu) dressing that I preferred much more, as it was refreshing with the iceberg. I didn't actually finish this salad since my entree came pretty quickly and I was eager to dig in :)

Cafe Mami salad

Now for the main event! The pork cutlet curry entree is composed of a pork cutlet that has been breaded and fried, then sliced up and topped with Cafe Mami's popular curry sauce. Japanese curry is very different from Indian curry, as it is a mild and particularly savory curry made with a roux base (which is a butter and flour mixture that thickens up the curry sauce) and lots of delicious spices. It is stewed all day with onions, potatoes, carrots, and beef so there are lots of wonderfully infused flavors in the curry. There are optional items to add to the dish, such as a fried egg and/or cheese. Greg and I both got the pork cutlet curry with a fried egg on top, cooked sunny side up. Yummy! The curry dish comes with a side of white rice that you can get endless refills of, and some pickled daikon radish pieces (the red bits on the left hand side of the plate) that have a sweet and salty flavor with a good bit of crunch to add variety to the dish. I adore Japanese cutlet curry! It is such an amazing blend of flavors and I really like the fact that is it savory (as opposed to the sour taste of Indian curries), which goes particularly well with the pork cutlet. The cutlet is always fried to perfection, and when topped with curry, it really brings out the crunch of the bread crumbs and the pork flavor. Even the curry alone with a side of rice is downright delicious. Mmmm. You get pretty full from the entree, though there are some people that really make the curry last by getting lots of rice refills.

Cafe Mami pork cutlet curry

I highly recommend this restaurant for all its yummy dishes (I have tried several of them) and its rare authentic Japanese-style comfort food that is so difficult to find in Boston. The only downside would be its price. Our cutlet curry dishes were $9.50 each, which isn't bad in general, but for the awkward seating and our college student wallets it's a bit of a hit. The pho I had earlier this week only cost $5.25 for the bowl. Much cheaper! But to me going to Japantown is always a treat, and the other restaurant stalls also have a lot of amazing and interesting foods to offer.


3:15AM Dorm Room
1 adzuki cream puff from Japonaise! :D I totally didn't realize that Japonaise has a small counter in Japantown where they sell some of the more popular goods from the main store. So of course I was ecstatic and bought 2 adzuki cream puffs to enjoy later on. Sooooo goooooood.

I also bought a couple of pastries for Greg, one of which was a maple pecan roll. It looks a lot like a cinnamon bun, but its circular layers are composed of tons of thin layers of croissant dough which was buttery and crispy after it was baked. It's topped with a yummy looking caramelized maple sauce and toasted pecans, with a similar mixture in the circular layers just like a cinnamon bun. Greg let me have a little taste of it and it was really decadent. This pastry seems to have more of the French influence of the bakery than the Japanese, but I don't think Greg minds at all :P

Maple pecan roll

1 comment

11:30AM Molecular Biology Lecture
1/4 of a chicken and broccoli calzone from a study break on Tuesday night. The calzone had some mozzarella and ricotta in it too, though I'm not too fond of ricotta cheese in general. It's that gritty texture, like a finer version of cottage cheese, so unappealing. Otherwise though, the calzone wasn't bad. The broccoli in it was sweet and crunchy, and the chicken, though dry, was seasoned. Initially I thought 1/4 of a calzone was too tiny for a meal, but after I ate it and sat in class for a while, I realized I wasn't hungry anymore. Nifty.

4:30PM Dorm Room
A few almonds as a snack.

6:15PM Baker Dining
Roasted turkey dinner!! Yay! Baker already has yummy turkey dinners (made from processed turkey), but today they went all out and had real roasted birds! I walked in and the lady goes, so you want turkey breast or a leg or something else? And me, being super exciting about having a whole bird to choose from, said I'd take dark meat. That translated into the server literally ripping off the entire drumstick and thigh from a turkey and dumping it in my box, along with stuffing, mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, gravy, and cranberry sauce. It was so ginormous I couldn't even close my box! And boy was that turkey good. Not only was the dark meat incredibly moist and flavorful, the stuffing was also delicious, and the vegetables had that steamed spinach again which made me happy. I didn't eat much of the mashed potatoes, but the cranberry sauce went really well with the dinner, cutting through the meat and saltiness of everything else. I still have sooo much left over haha it'll make a great leftovers meal.

Turkey dinner

8:00PM Dorm Room
DESSERT! This is literally the most delicious creme brulee I have ever eaten. Oh wait, I've only had creme brulee once before and it was a mini-dessert at some formal, so it doesn't count. Oh my gosh this creme brulee was soooo luscious and smooth I loved every second of it! I didn't even care that the top wasn't crunchy, the whole dessert was perfect just the way it was. The top tasted like caramelized sugar, which reminded me a lot of dulce de leche (which it should, I suppose), and underneath was a velvety custard that melted in your mouth and had the perfect amount of creaminess and sweetness. The fact that it was cold from being in my refrigerator made it taste a lot like an airy ice cream. I am so in love with it, all I want is more! Seriously... this could be one of my new favorite desserts! Man French people really know how to make fantastic desserts, like the yummy ile flottante. Mmmmmmm I'm in heaven...

Creme brulee

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11:45AM Molecular Biology Lecture
1/2 of yesterday's chicken stir fry, with 1/2 bowl of leftover roasted butternut squash and garlic soup. Yum. I forgot to mention that in the past 2 stir fries I've eaten they were brown rice-based. I chose them for that reason, I wanted to get in some healthy carbs and vegetables. I'm not an advocate of Atkins diets or anything that tends to cut out entire types of foods. I only minimized carb intake prior to senior ball to shed water weight fast, but that's a really bad way to eat in the long run. I still try to limit the amount of simple carbs I eat (refined sugar and flour), but I'm a firm believer of eating a variety of foods to stay healthy. So while I had a choice yesterday to get scrod with a side of corn, I picked the brown rice stir fry instead.

5:00PM Dorm Room
While waiting for Baker to offer dinner, I snacked on a small handful of roasted cashews. While I was doing so I started looking up the nutritional benefits of eating nuts, and they all seem to be really good for you, with cashews being the least fatty (albeit good fats) and caloric. I never knew this, I always thought the buttery taste of cashews meant that it had more fat content than almonds, but now that I know I feel much better eating them instead of my almonds haha :)

6:30PM Baker Dining
Went downstairs and realized that Baker was having their special sushi event, so I picked up a dragon roll for dinner and a Philly roll for tomorrow's lunch. The dragon roll, which I've gotten before, was pretty good. It's essentially a california roll with slices of unagi (bbq eel) on top, except this time there was no avocado in the roll, just crabmeat and cucumber. I didn't really mind, I really just get it because I love unagi. I didn't use any soy sauce with the sushi, partially because I forgot to grab any, but also because the soy sauce this company brings with them is the gross kind you get with Chinese takeout... basically pouches of salty water with caramel coloring. In any case, I don't need the extra sodium heh.

Dragon roll

I considered grabbing another bowl of the butternut squash soup to go with my sushi, but I got distracted at the dessert station by small ramekins of creme brulee. Oh la la. Unfortunately, despite its luscious looking surface, it actually wasn't hard like newly flamed creme brulee should be. It was soft, which means either they forgot to sprinkle sugar on top before flaming, or it's leftovers from yesterday or something. I'm not quite sure, but since it already wasn't crispy on top, I just put it into my fridge to eat tomorrow. So you'll have to wait for that picture :P

8:45PM McCormick Dorm Penthouse
3/4 of an Ankara vanilla frozen yogurt with oreos blended in. We were having an election for next year's exec board of MAPS (MIT's Minority Association of Premedical Students), and only about 10 people showed up, so there was a lot of leftover frozen yogurt, unfortunately. But it was a pretty smooth election, since after talking things out (there were 7 running candidates and 8 open positions), we all worked out what positions we wanted and didn't even have to vote. So I am the new social chair for next year :) I'll have fun organizing events for the club, and you know I'll enjoy figuring out food for the events haha.

10:00AM On the way to lab
1 Kashi TLC (tasty little chewies) granola bar in "peanut peanut butter" flavor. Wow these granola bars are REALLY good! Way way better than the Special K ones I've been eating. I pinched this box from home, but now I really gotta stock up. Not only do they taste wholesome and filling, they're super good for you. No artificial ingredients, lots of protein and fiber, and is whole grain. I was definitely fuller eating this bar, and the taste was addictive, especially with the crunch of peanuts on top of the bar. I'll take a picture sometime when I'm not rushing somewhere and eating this :P

1:00PM Lab Lounge
Leftover 1/2 of my tofu stir fry from last night (about 2 cups), with 3 cups of water (24 oz).

6:30PM Baker Dining
1/2 entree of chicken stir fry with vegetables and teriyaki + sweet garlic sauce. I took a picture of this, then realized that it looks practically the same as the tofu stir fry, except with chicken lol. I wanted to get something different, but there weren't any other exciting options except a Reuben sandwich, which I like but isn't great for you. I did get a bowl of soup though, to go with my stir fry. It was roasted butternut squash and garlic soup, and it was SO good. I love the taste of butternut squash and roasted garlic, but together they made a perfect duo. The squash has a sweet nutty flavor that goes really well with the strong roasted garlic taste, and is balanced out by just the right amount of salt in the creamy soup. The creaminess doesn't come from excessive heavy cream, but rather from the pureed squash and garlic, kind of like the creaminess of split pea soup. Delicious! I had half a bowl, and I'm saving the rest for lunch tomorrow with the rest of the stir fry. Can't wait!

Roasted butternut squash and garlic soup

9:00AM Kitchen (home)
Happy Mother's Day!!! I thought long and hard about what to do for my mom on Mother's Day, and decided I'd make her breakfast. Well, after I came home I realized that we were seriously lacking materials for breakfast, so I searched long and hard online for a recipe that I actually had all the ingredients to make. That recipe was peach cream pie, which doesn't actually require any cream (something I didn't have). I also didn't have fresh peaches, so I substituted in canned peaches, which the recipe says is okay, but I don't think I'll be doing that again next time. I also used a frozen but uncooked pre-made pie crust, so it wasn't much work to get it going. I wish I had taken a picture, but it did come out looking similar to the picture on the recipe website, although the inside of the pie was a bit mushy since the canned peaches didn't hold up well during the baking. So when I cut it up it became more like a peach cobbler lol. Still, the taste was quite good, the "cream" filling surrounding the peaches was kind of like a sugar cookie-flavored custard with a crispy crust, and the peaches were not tart at all. I baked the pie at a higher temperature than the recipe suggests, to help firm up the pie (15 minutes at 400F, then 30 minutes at 375F, then 15 minutes at 300F).

With the pie I also served a sampling of English tea cookies (small, crunchy spherical cookies dusted with powdered sugar, pretty subtle, and definitely goes well with tea), and some Walker's hazelnut shortbread cookies which my mom adores. My mom and dad got green teas, and me and my brother had vanilla chai tea with milk. Yum! We all had a great breakfast, and my mom was very happy. I unfortunately did not wake up before her (she was already up at 7am making her own breakfast! I had to stop her and be like okay go do something else I'm making breakfast lol). But hey it's the thought and effort that counts right. This is what the pie looked like (minus the dollop of cream on top), even though the picture is of peach cobbler:

What my peach cream pie looked like...

12:30PM
Homemade turkey burgers with an Asian flair. I asked my mom to buy ground turkey for making turkey burgers, and she told me they didn't have ground turkey at the supermarket. So she bought turkey cutlets and ground them herself with a food processor. Haha the woman has determination! I marinated them overnight with a mixture of sauces and seared them in a skillet to make lunch for the family. It was kind of scary cooking these turkey patties (I'll tell you why later), but they came out tasting really good! Since they were marinated they had a lot of great flavor, and cooking them on a skillet gave them an interesting char you wouldn't get on a grill. My family ate these on buns, but I just ate mine with a fork because they were nice and tasty all on their own. Here's a picture that looks similar to my turkey burger patties, except mine came out a lot darker. Recipe included below also. I adapted this recipe from a Weight Watchers recipe that talks about how great turkey burgers are and how you can make them even healthier by stirring in your condiments into the meat before grilling them to get lots of great flavor. Personally, I think you can turn this recipe into turkey meatballs if you just add some bread crumbs or something to it heh.

What my turkey burger looked like...

Turkey Burgers with an Asian Flair
1 lb. of ground turkey
1/2 onion finely minced (or more coarsely chopped if you want more bite)
1/3 cup of ketchup
1/4 cup of yellow mustard
1/4 cup of barbeque sauce
1/5 cup of hoisin sauce

Directions:
1. Combine sauces together in a bowl, mix well. Add to ground turkey, then stir in onions.
2. Marinate overnight in refrigerator, covered.
3. On medium heat, warm a little bit of oil in a skillet. Shape ground turkey into 4-6 patties, and cook in skillet a couple at a time. They take about 2 minutes on each side, but check to make sure the centers are cooked through and there is no liquid escaping from the middle. Serve as a burger or with a side of vegetables.

(So the complications of this recipe... when you marinate the ground turkey, it releases a lot of liquid. Liquid + oil in skillet = very bad popping. I think grilling is supposed to get around this problem, but I didn't feel like firing up the grill just for this purpose. I mean cooking these in a skillet is definitely doable, just be aware that the oil is going to pop a lot, so use a lid and wear an apron lol. Also, the use of all these sugar-containing sauces (ketchup, bbq, and hoisin sauce) meant that the patties were charring very quickly on the outside. Definitely use a non-stick skillet, otherwise you will be miserable. The insides were nicely cooked though, so don't let a charred outward appearance scare you. Otherwise, enjoy!)

I also ate some leftover teriyaki salmon, ribs, and green beans along with the turkey burger patty, because I made my patties small and didn't quite make enough lol.

6:30PM Baker Dining
1/2 entree of tofu stir fry with mixed vegetables and chili garlic + soy ginger sauces. I've never gotten Baker's tofu stir fry before, and I figured I had had enough meat for the eat, so I decided to do the tofu. It was pretty good, although I was kind of turned off by the sour smell of the tofu while the stir fry was sitting on my desk. I mean, being Asian, I'm definitely used to eating tofu, but that doesn't mean I enjoy its sour smell all that much. Mostly because spoiled tofu tastes sour and really does a number on my stomach. Ah, so happy to be back to using my own pictures :)

Tofu stir fry